Republicans today rage about couch potatoes who don’t have a job collecting food stamps (never mind that most of the recipients already work. For families with children, 75 percent unless you are disabled or elderly).But in 1939, unemployment was reason You went to food stamps.As with most New Deal social welfare programs, the idea was not to punish the unemployed, but to help them. Christopher Bosso, Northeastern University political scientist and forthcoming author Why SNAP Workstold me that qualifications for the New Deal program are well depended on The recipient is registered with a local relief program. No welfare, no food stamps. (SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Program, as Food Stamps were renamed in 2008, was a sorry effort to reduce stigma that was never adopted.) First Recipient, New York Machinist of State Rochester was named Ralston Thayerwas Gates’ worst nightmare: 35, able-bodied, unemployed. “I have never received surplus food before.” Thayer told reporters“But the procedure seems very simple. I’m certainly going to take advantage of it.”
With the economic recovery during World War II, food stamps disappeared. In the 1950s, Senator George Aiken, a Vermont Republican, called for the revival of food stamps, but the Eisenhower administration showed no interest. These were years of prosperity, as Michael Harrington notes in his 1962 book. other america, The poor no longer look even liberal. Under President John F. Kennedy, thanks in part to Harrington’s book, that began to change, and by 1964 food stamps were back in law. The first is to “strengthen the agricultural economy.” Second, “to help make more full and efficient use of food abundance.” And only his third (oh yeah) for “improving nutrition levels in low-income households.” Still, Republican opposition (combined with resistance from Southern Democrats) nearly ruined the bill. Massachusetts Rep. John McCormack, the Democratic House Speaker, finally secured his support by linking aid to cotton and wheat farmers.